Those damn kids with their iPhones and Instagrams! When I wanted to talk to my friends I had to wait until my ma was off the phone. And if I thought something was funny, maybe two, three people saw it not half the world's teenage population.

If charter schools are supposed to help inner city minority kids, why did the NAACP just call for a national moratorium on them?

Maybe because charter schools are more about diverting public education spending into the pockets of the already wealthy than helping kids of any race.

The NAACP got this one right. Unfortunately, the leaders of both major parties let hedge fund managers dictate public education policy instead of parents, teachers, and academics.

We need to convince Hillary to pick an actual educator for education secretary, and not another privatizer like Arne Duncan or John King.

The blogger who reported this explained what led the NAACP to this in an earlier post, and gave an excellent overview of the profit motive and players behind the education reform movement.

I don’t believe that this has been reported anywhere else. Last week at the NAACP National Convention in Cincinnati, the delegates voted in a new resolution on charter schools. It’s approval as policy will not be official until the National Board meeting in the Fall of 2016. However, this is a big news story that (I suspect because of the political conventions) has not yet entered the traditional media.

Yesterday in the post How will history remember the @NAACP on charters? I discussed the 2010 and 2014 NAACP charter school resolutions. The 2016 NAACP convention voted and approved the following resolution. I am honored it originated from the California Hawaii NAACP, where I serve as Education Chair.

The 2016 NAACP delegates at the national convention called for a moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charters.

So for those of you who emailed me yesterday saying that NAACP chapters in various places have gone rogue supporting charters— know that the force of the national organization is NOT on their side.

“…the NAACP opposes the privatization of public schools and/or public subsidizing or funding of for-profit or charter schools…”

“…the NAACP calls for full funding and support of high quality free public education for all children…”

The resolution goes on to oppose tax breaks to support charter schools and calls for new legislation to increase charter school transparency. Moreover, charters should not be allowed to kick students out for disciplinary reasons.

***

The pro-charter story has been told by deep pocketed investors such as the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family Foundation. But the idea that a separate parallel school system would somehow benefit black and brown children goes against history and common sense.

Even if Putin isn't pulling his strings, given Trump's AMERICAN mob ties, his Russian ones could certainly make him vulnerable to blackmail and coercion.

Don't presidential candidates go through some kind of background check before they start getting those intel briefings?

Also, I understand (though disagree) with why the Democratic Party avoids investigating the crimes of Republicans, but in the case of Trump, such an investigation could save the country from a fatal self-inflicted wound.

The Justice Department should be investigating both his foreign and domestic organized crime ties post haste.

The fact that he knows nothing and is a racist bully will not hurt him with Republicans at all.

Hillary's "what about the children" ad and using Trump's anti-women comments were great though again, won't shake his base.

What might is something like his "You're fired!" tag line with some blue collar guy sitting on his couch or at a bar watching Trump on THE APPRENTICE and turn to his wife or drinking buddy and say he was actually fired or cheated out of wages or best yet, replaced with undocumented workers by Trump.

NOTE: after I wrote the above paragraph, I saw that Kaine said, "Do you want to vote for the guy who said, 'You're fired!' or the guy who said, 'You're hired'?"

Also, he sells himself as a self-made man, but got a HUUUGE loan from his dad to start out.

It would also be worth doing something with his bankruptcies: while Donald was taking his Republicans in Congress were making it harder for consumers and impossible for student loan borrowers. (This one might play more to swing voters than the GOP base).

While there was not a lot new in the 28 pages, there were some crucial new bits like this piece of an Intercept reporter noticed about Bin Laden:

While the report does not find any smoking gun pointing to official Saudi involvement, it does highlight one consistently troubling theme of the kingdom’s response to the attacks: its refusal to cooperate with investigators seeking to uncover information about the hijackers. As the report notes, “In testimony and interviews, a number of FBI agents and CIA officers complained to the about a lack of Saudi cooperation in terrorism investigations both before and after the September 11th attacks.”

Referencing a May 1996 Director of Central Intelligence memo, the report cited agency beliefs that “the Saudis had stopped providing background information or other assistance on Bin Ladin because Bin Ladin had ‘too much information about official Saudi dealings with Islamic extremists in the 1980s for Riyadh to deliver him into U.S. hands.’”

Even if you give Bush a pass for ignoring warnings BEFORE 9/11, after the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 Report, he knew that Saudi Arabia offered far more financial and operational support to the hijackers than any other country.

The Taliban was essentially al Qaeda's landlord.

And none of the evidence of Iraq's involvement with al Qaeda held water.

Bush did NOTHING in response to Saudi Arabia's role in an attack except smoke cigars with Prince Bandar on the back porch with the Pentagon still smoldering in the background.

At minimum, this means the Bush administration was either afraid to confront and punish Saudi Arabia or he put his family's and our countries (in that order) financial entanglement with Saudi Arabia ahead of lost American lives.

How are his administration's crimes on this matter not worthy of investigation and prosecution when we ran one president from office for a botched politically motivated burglary and spent a decade trying to impeach another (with some bipartisan support) for lying about his sex life under oath?

Thousands of people died, and leaders of both parties love to shake the terrorism boogey man when there's another Middle Eastern secular dictatorship that they want to replace with chaos and violent madness, but those same leaders act like the real sponsors of terror aren't worth bothering with?

Isn't it worth investigating whether using such "allies" and methods are in the interests of average Americans or whether they needlessly put our lives at risk for policy goals that benefit a very, very few?